In and around Seoul: food on tour simultaneously

South Korea is one of the largest e-commerce markets in the world. It is also one of the pioneers in online food sales - business is booming in the Seoul area in particular. Lotte Mart also recognized early on that the shopping experience and shopping options are increasingly influencing purchasing decisions and is constantly focusing on its omni-channel services. The company currently generates 3.1% of its total turnover with its online store lottemart.com. Lotte Mart has set itself the goal of taking a leading role in online grocery retail and setting the standard. To this end, the company is expanding its online logistics network and investing in the Lotte Group's most modern distribution center in Gimpo/Seoul, which Knapp is equipping with its E-Grocer system solution.

Ordered online, delivered a little later

In single-shift operation, there are four delivery waves per day - consumers are thus supplied within a few hours of placing their order. The new system is designed for up to 10,000 orders per day, which can include items from the dry, fresh and frozen ranges. The orders are compiled in three different temperature ranges under optimum ergonomic conditions for the employees. The system also extends over four floors. Optimum use of the building height minimizes expenditure on land, which is a major cost driver in Asian cities.

Simultaneous processing

Lotte Mart, the grocery retailer in South Korea, delivers fresh goods to its customers on the same day via the Lotte Mart Mall online store.

Lotte Mart's warehouse exclusively processes e-commerce orders, which must reach the end consumer on the same day as the order is received. When designing the solution, ensuring a continuous cold chain required the creation of different temperature zones on several floors, which are connected by the high-performance Knapp Streamline conveyor technology. In addition, all the technologies used had to be accommodated in as small an area as possible in order to minimize the enormously high land costs in Asian cities.

Knapp implemented the E-Grocer system solution, a solution specially developed for online grocery retail, which is already in operation several times in Europe and was adapted to the specific local conditions for Lotte Mart. Lotte Mart was particularly impressed by the tried-and-tested OSR Shuttle, which is used as a warehouse and goods-to-person picking system. In addition, the OSR Shuttle Sorter enables a very high number of delivery rounds to be processed simultaneously. Compared to conventional sorter technologies, it offers many more sorting destinations with a high buffer capacity, which enables customer orders to be allocated to many small tours. The optimum ergonomic conditions at the various work stations were also a high priority for Lotte Mart. Thanks to the efficient overall concept with the technologies and control mechanisms used, Lotte Mart can guarantee its customers a very short delivery time and high quality.

Point for ergonomics: the products are positioned in the ideal gripping area at the workstations

The Pick-it-Easy Health work stations are used to pick medium and slow-moving items from the dry goods range. The orders are processed ergonomically using the goods-to-person principle. Control mechanisms help to prevent errors.

With its 28,672 storage locations, the OSR Shuttle at Lotte Mart enables space-saving and efficient storage of the items in the dry goods range. The high-performance storage and goods-to-person picking system provides the source containers in the correct sequence for picking at the eight connected Pick-it-Easy Health work stations. At the workstations, the goods are always made available in the ideal gripping area, creating optimum ergonomic conditions for the employee. EasyUse - the intuitive user interface - and a light guidance system guide the employee through the picking process. A light grid detects incorrect picks and thus contributes to quality assurance.

High sorting performance with the OSR Shuttle Sorter

The OSR Shuttle Sorter is used to prepare all assortment classes for dispatch. The finished order containers of a wave are sorted and buffered in dispatch sorting racks, taking into account the delivery tours. Once all the orders for a tour have been prepared, an employee manually transfers the containers to a mobile rack, which is loaded directly into specially designed delivery vehicles. The OSR Shuttle Sorter not only guarantees a high sorting performance but also the corresponding buffer capacity to process the high volume of an entire delivery wave.

Christian Slanina